One thousand camera traps reveal that forest mammal communities have a consistent structure and similar vulnerability across the tropics

By Francesco Rovero

That biological communities in similar environments but distant regions share forms and functions is a known pattern of diversity attributed to convergent evolution. For tropical forest mammals, which include some of the most...

A temporal exploration of food webs using biomonitoring data

Figure 1. Illustration - Exploring the past of a food web.

By Pierre Olivier

Since the very first representation of an ecological network (Camerano 1880), food webs have become an important tool to explore and summarize the...

The koala was a victim of prehistoric climate change

Image by John Llewelyn (Global Ecology @Flinders)

By Farzin Shabani, Frédérik Saltré, Corey Bradshaw, Katharina Peters and Antoine Champreux

Along with the kangaroo and the emu, the tree-living marsupial koala is the most recognised...

Mapping the puzzle of herbivore diversity across the Arctic: Functions and relationships matter

Figure 1 – A phylogenetically diverse Arctic herbivore community including rock ptarmigan and reindeer. Photo: Nicolas Lecomte​

By James D. M. Speed and coauthors

Understanding which species we find where, and why, is...

Passerine assemblages show niche expansion from natural to urban areas

Pictures of six common passerine species in our study locations. Species were increasingly tolerant to habitat transformation from left to right. Left-up: Red-billed Leiothrix Leiothrix lutea. Left-down: Grey-cheeked Fulvetta Alcippe morrisonia. Middle-up...

Finding the ‘best’ habitat suitability model

By Edward Gregr and Kai Chan

How is a habitat model’s complexity related to its forecasting skill? Our recent Ecography paper addressed this question using multiple data...

Shorebirds are important plant vectors via endozoochory

Figure 1. A flock of black-tailed godwit in one of our study sites in England, shortly after returning from breeding grounds in Iceland. Photo by A. J. Green​.

By Andy J. Green and Ádám Lovas-Kiss

The potential importance of...

Defaunation and fragmentation erode small mammal diversity dimensions in tropical forests

Figure 1: Best-fitting structural equation model (full direct + indirect model). Positive and negative pathways are indicated by black and gray lines, respectively. Arrow thickness is scaled to illustrate the relative strength of effects and significant coefficients are...

Determinants of reef fish assemblages in tropical Oceanic islands

Oceanic islands. A. St Paul and St Peter, Brazil, photo: Lucas Nunes, B. Isla del Coco, Costa Rica, photo: Juan J. Alvarado, C. Fernando de Noronha, Brazil, photo: Sergio R. Floeter, D. Isla del Coco, Costa Rica, João P. Krajewski, E. St Paul and St Peter, Brazil, photo:...

A parsimonious view of the parsimony principle in ecology and evolution

The curve-fitting problem. The choice of the most plausible hypothesis is based on an arbitrary balance between goodness-of-fit and simplicity criteria. The red curve is the simplest, indicating a linear relationship between the two variables, but also the worst-fit. The...